Kailand

Well, they are basically letting you get a single player experience for free, multiplayer you have to pay to play. Which makes sense, since the game is basically a single player game while leveling, with an MMO end game.

Looks like SWTOR is going with a hybrid model, free to play you can't do ops, and other areas of the game are limited, but the class stories can be played. I may have go through a couple more class stories. http://www.swtor.com/free/features

read here (google translated from a german site) http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fswtor.gamona.de%2F2012%2F07%2F10%2Fgeorg-zoeller-verlasst-bioware%2F&act=url

From complaints I've seen on the forums, people are complaining about lag, ability activation delay/misfires, and long queues during prime time. I sort of feel sorry for Biofail, they can't seem to do anything right. Seriously, do they test their stuff before bringing it live? I also experienced it on Ebon Hawk for the couple hours I was on before my sub ended, and it wasn't even prime time. It seems like their original fix for ability delay and lag, was to have half the people who subbed not log on.

My guess, no, not in the short term anyways. Their deal with lucas arts probably would not allow it.

The info was on the mail sent out and in the transfer faq, but here is the link. http://www.swtor.com/support/helpcenter/5310 BTW, my sub runs out in a couple hours so I won't be able to help in the process. Basically, empty out the guild bank on the origin server. Disband guild on origin server. reform guild on destination server. put in a ticket to get the guild bank tabs back. deposit stuff taken out of the guild bank.

Typical bioware - no details at all. They should've really done merges or guild transfers that would take care of even inactive members, instead of this amaturistic hack that they've implemented for the process, as they haven't taken into account more casual players, etc. (but that has been the entire story of development for this game so I shouldn't be surprised). But the hardware is not an issue, I'm pretty sure that all the servers they are running on are virtual machines anyways, so that it's easier for them to scale up/down the demands on the servers, so they can just consilidate smaller servers on a single piece of hardware, or have a mega server over many physical servers.

Looks like they have opened up transfers off of Shien to 'The Ebon Hawk'. But bioware being bioware has a piss poor excuse of a method to transfer guilds - they must be disbanded and the guild bank stuff distributed among members, and then after transfering the guild leader puts in a ticket to have the guild bank slots restored on the destination server. seriously... did they even think things through. they should've just done mergers or complete transfers. I say we don't bother with transfers at this time, as most of us are through with the game except for the odd one of us finishing off that last class quest, etc.. From the server lists, it looks like 'The Ebon Hawk' is going to be the sole east coast RP-PVE server.

Hi, ya, bioware austin (or should I say mythic) screwed the pooch and release the game at least 6 months too early. 1.3 is where the game should've been at launch. They released too many servers at launch, they should've just had a handful of servers and sharded people off - on shien even when at release seemed to have a max of only 300-400 people imperial side on at a time, which is sad considering swtor is classified as an mmo. and the pvp is horrid, and just getting worse all the time - healing nerfs, and time to kill being incredibly short. even before 1.2 it was bearable, but it was nothing but stun lock/ping-pong around the map until you were dead. They still have major bugs that were appearantly reported in beta but were never acknoledged and fixed. A poorly optimised engine. Load screens that can be measured in minutes, give me a break. really, the game is incredible amount of fun leveling, but they screwed up on the small stuff that keep people around, like sitting in chairs, chat bubbles, not having to travel for 15 min before going anywhere, a horribly random gathering/crafting system where only one profession is still remotely viable due to costs, a static environment. The legacy system, while a nice feature, has all the unlocks at incredibly unaffordable prices. Lack of communication on thier website, lack of a complete bug list, poor customer service, non-exsitant QA on thier patchs (seems to break more stuff than they fix). Really, a bunch of amateurs, but I guess that what happens when you put people from mythic who developed failhammer into developing a SWTOR mmo. And I can't stress it enough - Dailies as a time sink are a bad design - and the way swtor does it is very little cash for the effort. I wonder if bioware even has a plan for transfering guilds when they plan to move people to active servers. Really, I have a hard time to justify $15 a month to pay what amounts to a beta test, and what they've announced for future patches I just shake my head. I would expect that when they do their next quarterly that their subs numbers will be below 500k (which is still good for an mmo, but to go from almost 3 million at launch to 500k is sad, and they're blaming casuals, where it was the hardcores who left first, and they are overtuning stuff and making things difficult for 'casuals' so of course they are leaving too). SWTOR is going to be a case study of what not to do for future MMO's. That being said, I'm just playing right now to finish the agent story line (it is epic so far) and may end up paying one more month to finish, but I don't forsee myself playing the game again after that (unless it goes to free to play and not pay to win, or they lower the cost to $5 a month). Blizzard has it right for a gear grind MMO. I'll still play wow, although I'm on a bit of a break from it (even though I'm still paying the sub due to the annual pass). Diablo 3 is a lot of fun, can't wait for 1.03 to hit so inferno becomes fun (right now the gear/speccing is pretty much full tank, and act 4 geartif you are melee to complete act 2). Looking forward to GW2 - you can immediately pvp at max level with all your skills, etc. It's about skill, not the gear grind, so everyone is pretty much on an even playing field. If you want to grind gear for its appearance, the option is there. PVE is cooperative instead of competitive (i.e. no ninja's mobs or loot, someone helps you kill something, they get credit, even if you aren't in the same party) After playing the stress test, they have some way to go on engine optimisations, and some bug fixes to go (as well as adding some of the small but important stuff like chat bubbles, etc), but overall it feels more like an mmo than swtor ever did: There are people on the map! And the one thing I like - you don't have tons of abilities to hot fix and remember to use to play optimally, you are limited to 10 abilites, which is nice and forces you to think on how you build your character, and the elimination of the trinity is nice - no longer have to wait for a tank or a healer to log on to do anything, everyone is responsible for thier own life, but can help others if they want too.

Well, stephen reid only did communications with the community via twitter and facebook, rarely on the Authorized forums, so ya, his ass should be booted. I should not have to anywhere else except for thier website to learn anything about the game. As for QA people... look at the bugs/flaws/exploits that have made it into the production release as well as patching issues. These guys should've been fired after their 2nd or 3rd screw up, and if it is not the peoples fault, but a lack of resources, then its the managers fault. They released the game way too soon - not enough features in the game, they didn't listen to their customers, lack of customer service, the engine is an unoptimised buggy mess (tons of people still complaining about the aspect ratio bug thats been around since beta... because bioware austin cannot figure out the that when someone selects a particular resolution/aspect ratio, that's what they want to play the game at, not what they determine the native resolution to be through some algorithm). Somebody has a broken quest in their log... tough ###### is the customer service response, instead of them trying to reset the quest on their side, or even marking that step as complete. Legacy with unrealistic credit prices attached to it. Finally in an attempt to retain the hardcore raiders, the new flashpoint and ops are insanely overtuned/complicated even on story mode, unless you bring specific classes. Overall their design team is the team that needs to be fired, as well as the managers.

cool, police throw lightning, and he deflects it... wish there was a video of this... and maybe lucas could add in effects and sound after the fact

hrm, this appears to be a rumour, but if true it could be that EA\Bioware has finally turned on thier hearing aids to listen to the players. http://www.develop-online.net/news/40736/Pachter-Dragon-Age-3-devs-loaned-to-SWTOR

Well, if they would act like professionals and not like a bunch of amateurs, maybe they could hold on to subs. Take a look at today's patch - log on and your matrix cube disappears if you have it equiped. They said they fixed RE'ing orange craftable items (hint, they haven't: many posts complaining about this). Everyone remember when they said they fixed the pylon encounter (pre 1.2), when they didn't. They broke companion ear pieces and implants, and it took them 3 mini patches to fix that. They killed PvP completely in 1.2. Don't forget that patch applied after 1.2 that eliminated the black hole stuff for a day. They still haven't fixed some bugs that were reported in beta (resolution bugs, companion bugs, and more which I can't think of off the top of my head). To me it looks like they are hacking things together instead of having a proper development model, and testing strategies. The rakghoul event was nice... but wait, they didn't notify on their site when it was starting and ending, important information for players. The rakhoul dailies required you to do them every single day if you wanted to get the outfit, and the title relied on world bosses that would only spawn every 2 hours, with one of them requiring you to be flagged in a pvp zone. seriously, you would figure they would learn from the mistakes they already made, as well as other games: don't make world bosses content required to complete an achievement, have bis end gear stuff on (I'm thinking of belsavis boss pre 1.2, as well as the voss boss). Finally their customer service, or lack of it - how many of you have subbmitted a bug report, just to get a response that was not even related to what you asked, or even worse, you provide them with all the info, and then they ask for the info you provided them already. Really, the leveling experience is fun, and the class story lines are well done (except for the BH... it seems like they put it together in 5 min as an afterthought... although I'm only just finished the class series on balmorra on mine). They should have waited until 1.3 to release it, atleast 1.3 looks like all the stuff they promised pre launch finally making it into the game, but it's too little too late I think as the majority of servers are now low population. This game had promise, but I guess when they rolled over the old mythic team into bioware texas, the people from bioware that were working on it got pushed out.

If the play style is anything thing like the single player series, I'll stay away from this one.

This was our best member (Although I don't approve of bourbon... I'm all for the Scotch or Rye myself)

Well, infecting 10 other players is one of the dailies, and exploding gives you 5 Rakghoul DNA samples

Incoming news.... Imperial intelligence has information on a republic ship crashing on Tatooine, which was carrying a crew infected with the Rakghoul virus. Help the empire stomp out the rakghoul infestation before it spreads beyond Tatooine, and take the recommended procautions. ............... Here is a guide to the event http://www.swtor.com...ad.php?t=415875 There is a news kiosk on fleet, check it out! Some of the rewards are pets, companion skins and lightsabre crystals.

Cross Server queues are a necessity off of peak hours for both pve and pvp grouping, otherwise finding a group can take hours. Even during peak hours it can help fill in the one position you are missing for a group (in both settings). Now I agree, any cross realm queueing system should first try to match people within the server first before looking beyond it, and the implementation is non trivial. If they don't do this, you will get what we have now, very few people running pug groups for flash points (mainly because no one wants to wait 30+ min for the group to form, to have someone have to drop out half way through for one reason or another and not being able to fill the group). Cross server stuff won't affect guild/premade groups much at all, while allowing casual players and non-peak time players opportunity to run stuff. it would be much different if the servers could handle thousands of people at one time as opposed to hundreds, and there was a good balance of people at all times of the day. Got to laugh at the 1.2A patch screwing over the live servers, at least we get a free day out of it, and get to enjoy the weather. Positive -UI, love the customisation (some minor bugs but nothing major) -Engine/graphics are smoother and more detailed -Free month -New flashpoint is fun, but overtuned on Hard Mode. - Legacy is nice, but wish there was more - Old heroic 4's are now heroic 2's (lights out takes longer, no more exploits and you have to kill the boss) - New dailies are quick, but there are some really annoying ones. - Soa/pylons hopefully fixed for good Negative -Healing nerfed big time. I haven't healed enough groups (PvE) to get a complete grip on the changes yet, but i'm starting to feel that its losing its fun -Companions - ear/implants are bugged on companions, pathing is laggy for them. Xalek stats are still bugged (and have been since launch) -Updating the targeting info is really laggy (takes a while to update HP/etc) -Graphic engine crashes/corrupts on alt tab, aspect ratio bug is still around (existed since release). -PvP is worse now than before - instadeath without being able to get heals off (ie no survivability, interupted easily, and DPS can ignore me and still get down thier targets even if they are being healed), hard to get commendations as a pure healer, no rewards for losing at all. This is going to make less people queue for PvP. With 1.2 its not worth staying in a losing warzone as the rewards just plain suck. -Sith Warrior DPS gear all of a sudden had crit be replaced by def -armorings don't carry set bonus (as the patch notes say they should) -The older dailies take longer to do as they buffed the mob level and changed them slightly -The new heroic 4 - WTF would you get it only after doing the rest of the dailies - only reason to do it is for the weekly. this should really be a heroic 2 if its only available after completing the rest of them. -Lots of sound bugs (speeders still full blast sound when stopped, station roars, sound cuts in and out in places, the ping sound made when activating some things)

I'd like to see the finished part that the machine spits out. And vader wearing a skirt, looks like something that the bioware art department would use.

Ok, they have nerfed medpacs in 1.2, so you can only use them once per fight. I really don't know where they are going with this, unless they nerf encounter damage. The only explanation I can come up with is they expect a perfectly balanced op group, that execute perfectly as the only means to beat an ops encounter. i.e. only the hard core raiders will be able to progress.

Yes, Its a bioware game, and like the rest of thier stuff, its full of bugs, but it has great story telling. I just wish that they would fix content instead of doing massive changes to the class system and adding new content, that will of course introduce many more bugs. I read a thread on the PTR, where a group of rakata geared/optimised mods/BiS raiders, etc, who have done the speed runs on nightmare mode for both ops, and they say the story mode of the new op is challenging. That sort of comment does not bode well for people that arent' fully rakata geared and hardcore raiders - as story mode should require just the previous story mode gear (which is columi/tionese mix). Pretty much this is the issue going forward: Too many changes, not enough bug fixes, poor tuning, and they are making the game more grindy. I predict that they will lose many subscriptions. (they have already lost 500 000, and are down to 1.7 million as of their last report).

ick... looks like that the dailies will be worse than the current ones (same/less cash than ilum and belsavis, and will likely take more time than them)... and so far they only give daily commendations.

sounds like a good change for you Jugg's. The tree is corruption, and the major nerfs are to force bending (which is applied through Resurgence; an instant cast HoT on the GCD; with a CD of 6 seconds), and to our core regen mechanic through the Force Surge proc (which comes from when our Innervate (channelled heal) crits, which gets 4 ticks over 3 seconds with a 9 second cooldown). Consumption, which is our regen ability, sacrifices %15 health for %8 force, and lowered passive regen (which is pathetic, 8 force per second... so our long efficient cast time heal we regen enough to cast it in 7 seconds). The force surge proc made consumption cost no health.

Don't forget the fact that sorcerer healing is nerfed to the point of uselessness. Our regen mechanic becomes absolutely worthless (instead of getting procs, we now have to sacrifice 15% heal for 8% force, which we will spend more than 8% force to heal ourselves from that hit... WTF?) Our worthless fast heal, just became even more worthless, not even worth the force cost to cast. And the big heal just went from 1.5 seconds with a proc based buff to a constant 2.5 seconds (although a bit cheaper on force instead). And our AoE healing... stays the same, damn expensive heal that costs a good portion of our resources, 8 target cap. Result: no more regen, no more emergency healing, no more healing monkeys that even take 1 tick of avoidable damage. This will make healing karagga's near impossible as a sorcerer.

Moolicious